This book offers insights into diverse research perspectives on highly relevant issues in contemporary media and society, which have been fundamentally transformed by digital technologies. The main goal is to illustrate how different research interests and practical choices lead to a broad spectrum of approaches in media and communication studies. It places emphasis on the following aspects: how different methodological outlooks are combinable within the framework of practical research projects; how research interests and practical choices determine research practices; how media and communication studies inspire and stimulate research in different disciplines; and why it is imperative to have a critical look at the value of data and methods in the age of digitalisation. “Understanding” in this context is an umbrella term for different research perspective and methods that all try to map and examine how digital media change society from small, for example human-tech interaction, to large contexts, for example digital public spheres.
A strength of this volume is its international scope and its selection of arguments and case studies, ranging from deeper critical reflection on research methodologies to concrete studies on digital communities, political communication, news media coverage, visual communication, media and socialisation, and media usage in the health sector. The book’s chapters are a diverse selection of critical commentary and hands-on research and thus combine theoretical deliberation with empirical studies, to provide a rich “snippet” of how researchers globally, with different specialisations and at different academic career stages, practise media and communication studies.
The wider field of media and communication studies is still relatively young but can nevertheless look back at over 30 years of intense and highly interdisciplinary research in the constantly shifting intersections of sociology, cultural studies, political science, psychology, and, more recently, Internet studies, critical algorithm studies, and the computer sciences. It has distinct sub-fields with strong research traditions such as journalism studies and film studies and is open to the discovery of new ground, by merging with neighbouring disciplines, as, for example in the instance of media psychology. This diversity derives from the fact that media technologies mould and configure all aspects of social life (Couldry and Hepp 2018) that attract attention across the academic landscape. Digital technologies are ubiquitous and challenge a narrow understanding of the term “media” (Bunz and Meikle 2018). The “digital plenitude” (Bolter 2019) of contemporary media culture stimulates research in a variety of distinct sub-disciplines that share a common interest in the relationship between humans, individually and as groups, and the media technologies that they build.
Research on media and communication is by nature extremely dynamic and prone to adopt, but also shape, trends, as theories and methods evolve in close relationship with their manifold research subjects, which themselves change at a rapid pace. As an interdisciplinary field with manifold, often innovative research methods along the qualitative-quantitative spectrum, media and communication studies are constantly being reinvented. Especially in the age of digitalisation, algorithms, and big data, the field is one of the hotspots for trends related to the so-called digital humanities. The assumption is that with new types and large volumes of data, for example, about cultural and social practices in the use of media technology, new methods are needed for analysing inherently digital phenomena (Rogers 2019). However, despite a clear trend towards a digitalisation of the humanities, practical challenges related to the feasibility of data-driven research designs and an obvious need for more theory-focused research interests do not render “traditional” approaches obsolete.
Quite the contrary, a diversity of methodologies continue to exist in parallel to each other; they cannot be seen in isolation but in sum provide a complementary view on developments and challenges in political, social, and cultural practices that are inherently mediatised and digitalised. The research areas themselves are diverse and highly relevant for understanding culture and society, and the field of media and communication research has the potential to increase the current stock of knowledge considerably: what are communities and how do they form cultures? What is user behaviour and how does it change with new technologies? What is the history of media and how does it shape the present and future? What are current trends in media production and consumption? How do genres emerge and evolve? What is media (and data) literacy and how can it be included in media education? How do we frame groups and issues, that is, what is media representation? What is participation in media culture and public discourse? How do users interact with media technology and how do increasingly autonomous devices look back at users?
In this book, each contribution critically comments on trends in specific, but interrelated sections of media-based interaction. These range from empirical studies driven by digital methods to philosophical reflections on human-machine relationships. The chapters illustrate the variety of angles in the field, which goes much further than the traditional epistemological binarities of quantitative versus qualitative, or normative versus descriptive, research philosophies, as technological, cultural, and political factors also affect the way research is conducted in the (digital) humanities. The main questions the book attempts to find answers for are: what does media studies and communications research look like today? What are examples for digital humanities applied in practice—and to what extent have their expectations been either fulfilled or disappointed?
The book provides a sober and honest summary for why “old-fashioned” research practices still remain highly relevant for a diversity of reasons and why the field is constantly redefining itself. This is of great value for researchers, educators, and students: for researchers, to see how their work fits into current research trends and find inspiration from the examples, arguments, and insights in the book; for educators, to plan their teaching methods in relevant subjects and fill it with examples; and for students, to understand why their discipline is so inherently interdisciplinary and diverse and to inform them about the routes they can take in their own studies but also what obstacles they need to consider. In each chapter, emphasis is placed on elaborating about methodological choices in order to open them up for a broader audience. Thus, all contributions follow a similar structure in presenting their goals, frameworks, methodologies, and results to increase accessibility and comparability.
The book combines contributions from 14 international researchers, and the research is organised in three parts that in sum provide a comprehensive overview of current approaches to epistemological and methodological challenges, cultural analysis of media products, digital media and politics, media technology and human interaction, and the future of media studies and communications research.
Overview of Chapters
Part I, Challenges and Opportunities in Media and Communication Studies, starts with some fundamental questions about practising research in a highly interdisciplinary and rapidly changing field. Insights come from researchers with a common interest in critically analysing how digital technology shapes society, especially in regard to media technologies, but with diverse backgrounds ranging from digital and data politics (Dennis Nguyen) and fan culture studies (Nicolle Lamerichs) through visual media (Dulce Da Rocha Gonçalves) to environmental communication and tourism studies (Konrad Gunesch). In combination, their contributions map the chances and opportunities of digital media and digital data for both researchers and actors in specific domains (such as fan communities or travelling) and outline challenges, risks, and pitfalls that come with the ever-increasing digitalisation of social life. Despite their clearly distinguishable angles and different examples, the chapters are united by several broader questions about how research can take new directions in the age of digital media and also why it is not an easy feat to conduct valid and reliable research when addressing complex and dynamic social phenomena that involve media technology. However, they also shed light on how to learn from the past and propose new areas for fruitful research.
In his chapter “Media and Communication Studies in the Age of Digitalization and Datafication: How Practical Factors and Research Interests Determine Methodological Choices” Dennis Nguyen starts with outlining the potentials but also very practical limitations of embracing trends associated with the computerisation of research in media and communication studies as central sites for developing, discussing, and practising digital humanities. While disputes over methodological philosophies are not new to the field, media and communication studies may be the right place to experiment with mixed method designs that also make pragmatic use of digital research strategies. Dennis Nguyen observes that “for practical and research-interested based reasons, different methodologies continue to coexist and should explore when and how to complement each other. This also means that questions of reliability, validity, transparency and ethics stay as relevant as ever.”
Nicolle Lamerichs takes the argument further in the chapter “User Tactics and Algorithms: A Digital Humanities Approach to YouTube and Tumblr”. In her selected empirical cases Lamerichs takes a close look at how users form digital communities that are largely determined by online platforms such as YouTube and Tumblr. She places emphasis on how algorithmic configurations have a tangible impact on online communities and how users try to subvert and negotiate the rules of engagement. The chapter takes a critical look at the limitations of digital data if taken at face value and without contextualisation by raising essential questions: “In terms of methodology, scholars of media and platforms need to stay critical and weary of algorithms and guidelines that shape their data sets. Are there ways to apply digital methods while also being critical of platforms and their interfaces and policies? Considering that platforms filter so heavily, does it still make sense to focus on the content that users engage with the most?”
The next chapter takes a closer look at how the Internet forms a rich archive for records of human cultural activity. In her chapter “Making Sense of the (Internet) Archive: Negotiating Meaning, Memory and History in Artistic Practice”, Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves discusses photographer Daniel Blaufuks’ artistic methodology and exposes how the photographer works within the rules of his medium specificity: by highlighting the inner logic o...